Thursday, November 25, 2010

Prickly Pear Chiffon Cake

Now what is this exotic Prickly Pear?? They are known to few, the fruit of the nopales cactus (cacti with beaver tail-like paddles), are actually edible. Called prickly pears, these vibrant magenta color fruits are delicious,they taste like a cross between watermelon and pear. The best way to eat this is just cut it into halve and use a spoon to scoop out the flesh. The juice is often used to make jam or candy, but works wonders in cocktails and used in vinaigrettes for salads. I've seen people used the juice to flavor cream cheese frosting for cakes and have seen others boil it down with a bit of orange and lemon juice to make a sauce for fruit salads and cheesecakes.

We used to have one huge cactus plant at my mom house and there were plenty of these fruits on it but during that time we have no clue that they are edible. So the birds had a field time eating the sweet fruits.

Many Mexican markets, farmers markets, and some natural food supermarkets carry prickly pears, but you can find these mostly in California, the Southwest and Mexico. You can imagine my excitement when I saw these prickly pear fruits at our produce place as it is not easy to find them here in PA and without any hesitations I grab a few of it. It cost me quite a bit of money too.

Here is what I made out of the beautiful fruits. The juice of this pear gives a really beautiful pink color to the batter but after baking it kind turn into bright orangey color.

1. Cut the prickly pear into halve. By using a spoon scoops out all the flesh. Put it in a food processor and give it a few pulses. Strain out the juice to get rid of the black seeds. Set it aside.

2. Pre-heat oven to 325 degree F. Sieve all the (A) ingredient in a mixing bowl until well combined. Mix ingredient (B) until well blended and then add in ingredient (A) and mix until smooth. Set it aside.
3. Whisk ingredient (C) in mixer over high speed until stiff peak. It should not fall out when you turn the mixing bowl over. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the egg yolks mixture and continue to do so until egg whites is finish. Remember to fold in gently until well mixed.

4. Pour batter into ungreased 10" tube pan and bake for an hour or used a bamboo skewer to test the cake. Just insert the skewer into the center of the cake and it should come out clean.
5. Invert cake and let it cool complete in the pan. When is cool, loosen the edge of the pan and remove cake.

Note : Be warned though, while the ones in markets have been cleaned of the tiny hair-like thorns, the ones fresh off the cactus plant are covered with them, so be sure to handle them with heavy leather work gloves and scrub them hard to ensure all the painful little barbs are off. Also the juice might stain your clothing too. Either way, please handles them carefully.

I want to wish eveyone a very Happy Thanksgiving and hope you all have a wonderful time with your family and friend.

I saw these before. There are lots of them at my neighbourhood but never thought that can be eaten! Are these considered as fruit? They will turned green when mature, right!Thanks for sharing. What a wild guess? Anyone gets it correctly? haha....Kristy

I've eaten prickly pears in Morocco where the vendors wear gloves and peel them, and sell each for about 10 cents. They are very sweet. I have purchased them here in the US and put them in my juicer to blend with other fruit juices.

In. Illinois, they start green and turn deep orangey-red. The plants paddle shrivel up in the fall but the plant is not dead. Rather, it gets a new start in the Spring, plumps up, and gets covered with new beautiful yellow flowers with orange tints. Then comes the green fruit which eventually turns red.

I puréed mine to add to other juice. But how do you get the membrane-like consistency to be less membrane-like?

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About Me

I was born and raised in Malaysia and now live in Northern California, USA with my wonderful husband Carlos. I love to bake and cook. It is very relaxing and I find my creativity flowing in the kitchen. I creates this blog to record all my cooking and baking adventures and also share my tested recipes with you.
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